OANDA Japan: No More fxTrade, USD/JPY Margin Shift

On Friday, one of Japan’s longest-standing online forex and CFD brokerages, OANDA Corporation, announced major changes to their service. 

Specifically, the Japanese subsidiary of the brokerage will no longer allow new downloads of its desktop version of the fxTrade trading platform. It has also changed the margin rate for corporate accounts’ USD/JPY currency pairs from 2% to 2.2%. 

However, in a statement published in Japanese on its website, OANDA Securities noted that existing customers who have downloaded the desktop version can still use the software. It also said traders can still access fxTrade from a computer using TradingView’s desktop application. 

OANDA Changes USD/JPY Margin Rate

The change in margin rate affects only corporate accounts linked to OANDA Securities’ Tokyo or New York servers and will be implemented starting January 30th 2023. 

To help prevent potential losses due to this change, the broker recommends reducing positions or having enough money in an account by market close on January 27th 2023.

These changes come soon after the brokerage enforced a similar rate increase for NZD/USD and AUD/USD currency pairs. Last month, the new rate affected only corporate accounts connected to Tokyo or New York servers. 

Moreover, last year saw margin rates be adjusted for USD/SEK, GBP/USD, and GBP/JPYcurrency pairs as well – again; these were explicitly targeted at corporate accounts linked to Tokyo or New York servers. 

Finally, October 2020 also saw a brand identity refresh from OANDA and released their US crypto trading services via Paxos – a regulated blockchain infrastructure company.